LeGarrette Blount on his former team: ‘I’m a Patriots player now’

FOXBORO — As is the case with so many Patriots players, their past with another team is irrelevant. Once you walk through the doors at Gillette Stadium and take up quarters there for the season, what you did for another team matters not, good or bad. Coaches adopt this attitude and players are expected to follow suit.

There was yet another reminder of this approach on Thursday when former Tampa Bay bulldozer LeGarrette Blount was asked if he is looking forward to facing the team that traded him away to New England after just three seasons.

“I’m a Patriots player now, I don’t play for the Bucs no more,” Blount said. “I don’t look at them as a former team, I look at them as somebody I’ve got to play against, just like everybody else.”

The future for Blount seemed promising in Tampa Bay when he gained 1,007 yards in 2010, averaging five yards a carry in his rookie season out of Oregon. But in the next two seasons, he gained 751 and 151 yards respectively and fell out of favor, leading to the draft-day trade that sent Blount to the Patriots in exchange for speedster Jeff Demps.

Any added juice for Blount coming into the game?

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m coming into work, doing everything that I have to do, supposed to do, and go out there and play a game, just like I didn’t know nobody on that squad.”

Blount has carried the ball just 11 times for 26 yards in the first two games, serving as a back-up to Shane Vereen and Stevan Ridley. Blount, who weighs in at 250 pounds, has made the most noise on special teams, returning three kickoffs for 60 yards.

After spending three years in Tampa Bay, including one last season with head coach Greg Schiano, Blount was asked if he were prepared to give a scouting report to his current coaches.

“We have scouting reports, we all know their personnel and habits,” Blount said. “We watch film on them, so they know just about as much as I do.

“They’re a dangerous opponent, they’re a couple plays from being 2-0, just like [Bill Belichick] said,” he added. “It’s just going to be us coming out there and executing our game plan.”